UC Berkeley History Professor’s Open Letter Against BLM, Police Brutality

and Cultural Orthodoxy

Dear profs X, Y, Z,

I am one of your colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley. I have met you both
personally but do not know you closely, and am contacting you anonymously, with
apologies. I am worried that writing this email publicly might lead to me losing my job,
and likely all future jobs in my field.

In your recent departmental emails you mentioned our pledge to diversity, but I am
increasingly alarmed by the absence of diversity of opinion on the topic of the recent
protests and our community response to them. In the extended links and resources you
provided, I could not find a single instance of substantial counter-argument or
alternative narrative to explain the under-representation of black individuals in
academia or their over-representation in the criminal justice system. The explanation
provided in your documentation, to the near exclusion of all others, is univariate: the
problems of the black community are caused by whites, or, when whites are not
physically present, by the infiltration of white supremacy and white systemic racism into
American brains, souls, and institutions.

Many cogent objections to this thesis have been raised by sober voices, including from
within the black community itself, such as Thomas Sowell and Wilfred Reilly. These
people are not racists or ‘Uncle Toms’. They are intelligent scholars who reject a
narrative that strips black people of agency and systematically externalizes the problems
of the black community onto outsiders. Their view is entirely absent from the
departmental and UCB-wide communiques.

The claim that the difficulties that the black community faces are entirely causally
explained by exogenous factors in the form of white systemic racism, white supremacy,
and other forms of white discrimination remains a problematic hypothesis that should
be vigorously challenged by historians. Instead, it is being treated as an axiomatic and
actionable truth without serious consideration of its profound flaws, or its worrying
implication of total black impotence. This hypothesis is transforming our institution and
our culture, without any space for dissent outside of a tightly policed, narrow discourse.

A counter-narrative exists. If you have time, please consider examining some of the
documents I attach at the end of this email. Overwhelmingly, the reasoning provided by
BLM and allies is either primarily anecdotal (as in the case with the bulk of Ta-Nehisi
Coates’ undeniably moving article) or it is transparently motivated. As an example of the
latter problem, consider the proportion of black incarcerated Americans. This
proportion is often used to characterize the criminal justice system as anti-black.
However, if we use the precise same methodology, we would have to conclude that the
criminal justice system is even more anti-male than it is anti-black.

Would we characterize criminal justice as a systemically misandrist conspiracy against

innocent American men? I hope you see that this type of reasoning is flawed, and
requires a significant suspension of our rational faculties. Black people are not
incarcerated at higher rates than their involvement in violent crime would predict. This
fact has been demonstrated multiple times across multiple jurisdictions in multiple
countries. And yet, I see my department uncritically reproducing a narrative that
diminishes black agency in favor of a white-centric explanation that appeals to the
department’s apparent desire to shoulder the ‘white man’s burden’ and to promote a
narrative of white guilt.

If we claim that the criminal justice system is white-supremacist, why is it that Asian
Americans, Indian Americans, and Nigerian Americans are incarcerated at vastly lower
rates than white Americans? This is a funny sort of white supremacy. Even Jewish
Americans are incarcerated less than gentile whites. I think it’s fair to say that your
average white supremacist disapproves of Jews. And yet, these alleged white
supremacists incarcerate gentiles at vastly higher rates than Jews.

None of this is addressed in your literature. None of this is explained, beyond hand-
waving and ad hominems. “Those are racist dogwhistles”. “The model minority myth is
white supremacist”. “Only fascists talk about black-on-black crime”, ad nauseam. These
types of statements do not amount to counterarguments: they are simply arbitrary
offensive classifications, intended to silence and oppress discourse. Any serious
historian will recognize these for the silencing orthodoxy tactics they are, common to
suppressive regimes, doctrines, and religions throughout time and space. They are
intended to crush real diversity and permanently exile the culture of robust criticism
from our department.

Increasingly, we are being called upon to comply and subscribe to BLM’s problematic
view of history, and the department is being presented as unified on the matter. In
particular, ethnic minorities are being aggressively marshaled into a single position. Any
apparent unity is surely a function of the fact that dissent could almost certainly lead to
expulsion or cancellation for those of us in a precarious position, which is no small
number.

I personally don’t dare speak out against the BLM narrative, and with this barrage of
alleged unity being mass-produced by the administration, tenured professoriat, the UC
administration, corporate America, and the media, the punishment for dissent is a clear
danger at a time of widespread economic vulnerability. I am certain that if my name
were attached to this email, I would lose my job and all future jobs, even though I
believe in and can justify every word I type.

The vast majority of violence visited on the black community is committed by black
people. There are virtually no marches for these invisible victims, no public silences, no
heartfelt letters from the UC regents, deans, and departmental heads. The message is
clear: Black lives only matter when whites take them. Black violence is expected and
insoluble, while white violence requires explanation and demands solution.

Please look into your hearts and see how monstrously bigoted this formulation truly is.
No discussion is permitted for non-black victims of black violence, who proportionally
outnumber black victims of non-black violence. This is especially bitter in the Bay Area,
where Asian victimization by black assailants has reached epidemic proportions, to the
point that the SF police chief has advised Asians to stop hanging good-luck charms on
their doors, as this attracts the attention of (overwhelmingly black) home invaders.
Home invaders like George Floyd.

For this actual, lived, physically experienced reality of violence in the USA, there are no
marches, no tearful emails from departmental heads, no support from McDonald’s and
Wal-Mart. For the History department, our silence is not a mere abrogation of our duty
to shed light on the truth: it is a rejection of it.
The claim that black interracial violence is the product of redlining, slavery, and other
injustices is a largely historical claim. It is for historians, therefore, to explain why
Japanese internment or the massacre of European Jewry hasn’t led to equivalent rates
of dysfunction and low SES performance among Japanese and Jewish Americans
respectively. Arab Americans have been viciously demonized since 9/11, as have Chinese
Americans more recently. However, both groups outperform white Americans on nearly
all SES indices – as do Nigerian Americans, who incidentally have black skin. It is for
historians to point out and discuss these anomalies. However, no real discussion is
possible in the current climate at our department. The explanation is provided to us,
disagreement with it is racist, and the job of historians is to further explore additional
ways in which the explanation is additionally correct. This is a mockery of the historical
profession.

Most troublingly, our department appears to have been entirely captured by the
interests of the Democratic National Convention, and the Democratic Party more
broadly. To explain what I mean, consider what happens if you choose to donate to
Black Lives Matter, an organization UCB History has explicitly promoted in its recent
mailers. All donations to the official BLM website are immediately redirected to ActBlue
Charities, an organization primarily concerned with bankrolling election campaigns for
Democrat candidates. Donating to BLM today is to indirectly donate to Joe Biden’s
2020 campaign. This is grotesque given the fact that the American cities with the worst
rates of black-on-black violence and police-on-black violence are overwhelmingly
Democrat-run. Minneapolis itself has been entirely in the hands of Democrats for over
five decades; the ‘systemic racism’ there was built by successive Democrat
administrations.

The patronizing and condescending attitudes of Democrat leaders towards the black
community, exemplified by nearly every Biden statement on the black race,
all but guarantee a perpetual state of misery, resentment, poverty, and the attendant
grievance politics which are simultaneously annihilating American political discourse
and black lives. And yet, donating to BLM is bankrolling the election campaigns of men
like Mayor Frey, who saw their cities devolve into violence. This is a grotesque capture
of a good-faith movement for necessary police reform, and of our department, by a
political party. Even worse, there are virtually no avenues for dissent in academic
circles. I refuse to serve the Party, and so should you.
The total alliance of major corporations involved in human exploitation with BLM
should be a warning flag to us, and yet this damning evidence goes unnoticed,
purposefully ignored, or perversely celebrated. We are the useful idiots of the wealthiest
classes, carrying water for Jeff Bezos and other actual, real, modern-day slavers.
Starbucks, an organisation using literal black slaves in its coffee plantation suppliers, is
in favor of BLM. Sony, an organisation using cobalt mined by yet more literal black
slaves, many of whom are children, is in favor of BLM. And so, apparently, are we. The
absence of counter-narrative enables this obscenity. Fiat lux, indeed.

There also exists a large constituency of what can only be called ‘race hustlers’:
hucksters of all colors who benefit from stoking the fires of racial conflict to secure
administrative jobs, charity management positions, academic jobs and advancement, or
personal political entrepreneurship. Given the direction our history department appears
to be taking far from any commitment to truth, we can regard ourselves as a formative
training institution for this brand of snake-oil salespeople. Their activities are corrosive,
demolishing any hope at harmonious racial coexistence in our nation and colonizing our
political and institutional life. Many of their voices are unironically segregationist.

MLK would likely be called an Uncle Tom if he spoke on our campus today. We are
training leaders who intend, explicitly, to destroy one of the only truly successful
ethnically diverse societies in modern history. As the PRC, an ethnonationalist and
aggressively racially chauvinist national polity with null immigration and no concept of
jus solis increasingly presents itself as the global political alternative to the US, I ask
you: Is this wise? Are we really doing the right thing?

As a final point, our university and department has made multiple statements
celebrating and eulogizing George Floyd. Floyd was a multiple felon who once held a
pregnant black woman at gunpoint. He broke into her home with a gang of men and
pointed a gun at her pregnant stomach. He terrorized the women in his community. He
sired and abandoned multiple children, playing no part in their support or upbringing,
failing one of the most basic tests of decency for a human being. He was a drug-addict
and sometime drug-dealer, a swindler who preyed upon his honest and hard-working
neighbors. And yet, the regents of UC and the historians of the UCB History department
are celebrating this violent criminal, elevating his name to virtual sainthood. A man who
hurt women. A man who hurt black women. With the full collaboration of the UCB
history department, corporate America, most mainstream media outlets, and some of
the wealthiest and most privileged opinion-shaping elites of the USA, he has become a
culture hero, buried in a golden casket, his (recognized) family showered with gifts and
praise.

Americans are being socially pressured into kneeling for this violent, abusive
misogynist. A generation of black men are being coerced into identifying with George
Floyd, the absolute worst specimen of our race and species. I’m ashamed of my
department. I would say that I’m ashamed of both of you, but perhaps you agree with
me, and are simply afraid, as I am, of the backlash of speaking the truth. It’s hard to
know what kneeling means, when you have to kneel to keep your job.
It shouldn’t affect the strength of my argument above, but for the record, I write as a
person of color. My family have been personally victimized by men like Floyd. We are
aware of the condescending depredations of the Democrat party against our race. The
humiliating assumption that we are too stupid to do STEM, that we need special help
and lower requirements to get ahead in life, is richly familiar to us. I sometimes wonder
if it wouldn’t be easier to deal with open fascists, who at least would be straightforward
in calling me a subhuman, and who are unlikely to share my race.

The ever-present soft bigotry of low expectations and the permanent claim that the
solutions to the plight of my people rest exclusively on the goodwill of whites rather than
on our own hard work is psychologically devastating. No other group in America is
systematically demoralized in this way by its alleged allies. A whole generation of black
children are being taught that only by begging and weeping and screaming will they get
handouts from guilt-ridden whites.

No message will more surely devastate their futures, especially if whites run out of guilt,
or indeed if America runs out of whites. If this had been done to Japanese Americans, or
Jewish Americans, or Chinese Americans, then Chinatown and Japantown would surely
be no different to the roughest parts of Baltimore and East St. Louis today. The History
department of UCB is now an integral institutional promulgator of a destructive and
denigrating fallacy about the black race.

I hope you appreciate the frustration behind this message. I do not support BLM. I do
not support the Democrat grievance agenda and the Party’s uncontested capture of our
department. I do not support the Party co-opting my race, as Biden recently did in his
disturbing interview, claiming that voting Democrat and being black are isomorphic.

I condemn the manner of George Floyd’s death and join you in calling for greater police
accountability and police reform. However, I will not pretend that George Floyd was
anything other than a violent misogynist, a brutal man who met a predictably brutal
end. I also want to protect the practice of history. Cleo is no grovelling handmaiden to
politicians and corporations. Like us, she is free.